What Being Good at Groove Is

0:57 What's good everybody?Today I wanna talk about how music is a game of millisecondsand how there's actually a disagreementfrom what the science says versus what I feeland what musicians feel about how tightthe groove has to be in order for it to feel ahead,behind, on beat for musicians to feel likethey're really playing together.Like what is groove?And the reason why I'm thinking about this is

1:26 I've been in a weird kind of health situationwith some pain and some bizarre stuff going onin my legs, I'm all good.But it was a interesting reminder of how indebtedI am to everyone else around me for helping me outif something bad happens and all of us to everyone else.And it's that moment of you don't really think about ituntil you have a bunch of nurses poking and prodding

1:53 and a doctor checking you out and then you come homeand like my wife is helping me get ice packsand all this kind of stuff.And it's just the kind of thing that makes you thinkabout okay, music is not a solo sport,life is not a solo sport, all of it is relationaleven if you're playing all of the instruments.Because really what you're doing is you aretaking a version of yourself

2:18 and then the next version of yourself plays with itbut are those exactly the same people?And I would argue no,because every time you pick up another instrumentor pick up a different guitaror approach it from a different sense of beingyou had a different meal, you slept more or less that day.Like all of these little thingskind of changes who you are.The music that you're outputting,

2:44 the person that you're bringing to that recording session.So even if you're literally just playingevery single thing on the record,are you playing with exactly the same person?I would argue no.Sure, it can be the same name,it can be the same personalitybut you change even from take to take, you change.And that's part of the reason why we have variation.It's one of the coolest things about music

3:05 is that you can record 20 takesand one of them is gonna be the best.Why?Shit happens, I don't know.But part of that is that relational setupof our lives and the demands that we have to each otherwhen we're making music.So when you're in a jam session,there is really only one central demandand that's listen to each other.Everybody is contributing to a shared thing, the jam.And if we're not listening,

3:38 if we're not participating in a respectful manner,people vibe you, people don't like it.And even if you're not the best musician,like I've had jams with peoplethat barely know how to play instrumentsand it's super fun if everyone's listening to each other.And I've also had jams with peoplethat are really virtuosistic.And it's a real bummerif they are just focused on themselves.

3:59 And that's why I bring up the pain thingis there can be these moments that can shake you outof your self-importanceand can shake you out of that idealike you're an island,you're the best at that instrument.Everybody look at me, I'm taking my guitar solo.Like when you're taking your guitar solo,you should still be listening to the band,the band should be still listening to you.Even though you get the spotlight,

4:25 you can step out a little bit.You can be the leader.That's not what I'm saying.It's not that you always have to follow,but I'm saying you always have to participate.The easiest way to lose musical friendsis by not listening.And in a lot of ways,maybe that's the easiest way to lose friends in general.We're all, even when I'm talking by myselfinto a microphone, we're all connectedand we're all, I don't know.

4:49 There's no reason for me to do this podcastif nobody's gonna listen to it.And there's no reason for us to make musicif nobody's gonna listen to it, yourself included.Maybe it's a listener of one,but music is a team sport,even if it's a team of one.And let's talk about what actually is going on.And I think that groove is the best way to analyze itbecause groove, as in like kick drum happens,

5:15 then the bass guitar happens.The distance between those twocreates a sense of feel, of timing.The thing I didn't really recognizeuntil I started recording frequentlywas how much that gap came down to milliseconds.Frequently, five milliseconds.So researchers say that it's hard for a humanto perceive less than 10 milliseconds.I would deeply disagree.Because I'm able to play something to somebody blind,

5:46 then make some changes that are very minorin Pro Tools, drag things around, try to align them.And it feels different.Now, there are a few other things that might be going on.There's phase cancellation.So when a bass guitar and a drum, a bass drum, both hit,there is a certain amount of like low end frequency.And so I talk about noise canceling headphones all the time,

6:09 but that's the easiest example of you have one wave,you flip that wave and makes that initial wave go away.It inverts the signal, it disappears, noise canceled.Same thing can happen at a very micro scalein terms of phase cancellation.So you have one wave, you shift that waveover slightly and the plus and minusis kind of like a noise canceling headphone,but just a much more minor effectand that can go in and out.

6:35 It can go in and out of a phase relationshipso that at any given moment,the bass doesn't quite hit as hard.But this is something that a great bass playeris able to intuitively feel.They know, hey, if I place it here,the bass feels bigger.They're playing with the phase relationship.In the same way that you can get to knowthe player that you're playing with.And if everything was just reaction time,

7:03 bass drum hits, then I play.You're gonna be way too behind the beat.So you have to have like a predictive setof intelligence with the player,the personality that you're working with.You're not only listening to them,but you're analyzing, again, all intuitively,this is not explicit,this is just happening background noise.This is what being good at music is.Just like a great athletedoesn't think about their footwork.

7:28 But you're listening to the bass drumand you are predicting this player moves in this wayat different parts of the measure.This player leans in on the chorus,sits back in the verses,the fills speed up just ever so slightlyand then the rest of the bar slows downever so slightly immediately after the fills.And you can see it when you record it.The great relationship between the bassist and the drummer

7:55 has a certain amount of dance between them.And oftentimes, the groove is statically placed.So the kick drum happensand then always seven-ish millisecondsbehind the bass guitar happens.That's a magical and also kind of crazy thing.Because again, if that was 20 milliseconds,and I think the reaction time is even more than that,it would sound all messed up.So this is why we play to a metronome

8:25 is we're trying to align our frame of reference.However, you see this even on trackswhere people don't play to a metronome,particularly when they're in the same room together.There's a real magic to thatwhere you can feel the band ebbing and flowing,very human.I actually think that there's gonna be a lot moreof that comingbecause even though it makes it harder to edit digitally,

8:45 it is something that is very hard for an AI musicto comprehend or output.And I think anything that is fundamentally humanis going to become more and more desirable in music,just by a foil nature.Like if you want the hyper edited AI music,like just go listen to that.I think that's where we're going.That's my prediction.But that's really what all it isis that we're predicting each other.

9:11 We're predicting each other's next moves.We sometimes surprise each otherand those can be some of the coolest moments in a songwhere the bassist is draggingbut then the drummer starts to push.Like think about the police.You know, the police, Stewart Copeland is always rushingbut that creates an energy.It's a push pull of Sting and Andy Summerstrying to reel him back insaying no, no, no, don't go off the rails

9:36 but that push pull creates the trio.And because it's a trio, they have room to do this.So when you add more and more people onto the stage,especially when you have multiple drummers,just like Derek Trucks and two drummers is awesome.Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Rady Shell in San Diego.If you ever get to see a show there,highly recommend it.Sit on the Bayside.So you can see the Coronado Bridge

10:01 and hit that coastal breeze A plusbut had two drummers just like the Doobie Brothershad two drummers.And that is a really hard thing,Kamasi Washington two drummers typically,really hard thing to navigate becausejust think about all of the transients,all of the little hits, all of the little rhythmsthat now need to interplayand then add on this huge band around it.It's kind of a miracle that can even work

10:29 but it's a testament to that predictive capabilityand the conversational capability of musicbut you better listen.Like that, that is high wire act stuffbecause it can get so swampy, so fast.And typically the drummers have to havea relationship of kind of one A, one B.Like both of them have to almost give and takethe role that they're playing on the drum kit.Like say for example, one of them being very steady,

11:01 the other one playing more like a quasi percussioniston top, that happens often.Or both of them locking into one core beatand then one of them playing different subdivisions.So like somebody is just really, really laying inon the quarter or eighth noteand the other one gets the room to do the 16th notes.But again, it's not just timing.The choice of the thing that you're hitting,

11:23 a tom reacts in a different way than a hi-hat,really plays into this kind of conversational senseof like we're creating a groove together.How do we all get along?How do we make this a beast somebody actually wantsto listen to and we wanna play and we feel proud of?And yeah, you can zoom in, you can drag things around,but a lot of it comes down to where does that typeof transient, the type of attack wanna live?

11:48 So on guitar, guitar, typically when you're playingwith like a pick, the time between striking the guitarand the sound coming out is very small.It's very sharp.Same thing with the drum, very sharp.That's the snare, it's right here.But you can tune your snare, make it more gushy,you can make it darker, more dead end,and that can change the transient quality of it.The bass, a little bit harder to actually get the note

12:11 to sound, bigger strings, little bit more likeenergy required.And so I think that's naturally why you get guitariststending to rush, bassists tending to drag.And part of the reason why I think that guitarists,once you learn how to go behind the beat,you can unlock a whole different set of groovebecause you're actually delaying where I thinka lot of guitarists natural inclinations would go.

12:38 Like you naturally kinda wanna hit itwhere be on top of the beat.And because of the mechanics of a pick,you naturally are on top of the beat.So by delaying where you want to place thingsto suit the rest of the group.And because you're a higher frequency object,you want to be a little bit behindwhere the lower frequency objects arebecause the big, big energy comes from the low end.

13:05 Just like we talk about like a harmonic series,the low ends got more harmonic stuff going on.You, when you play a cluster chord,like I talked about in my last holo podcast,down low, it all steps on top of each other.When you play a cluster chord up top,like a bunch of notes kind of just all jammed in together,it sounds kind of beautiful.It sounds nice because there's more room,

13:28 at least to our perception, for that chord to sing.When you play it down low,you get all of those additional notesall the way up through the range of human hearing.And it all starts to kind of jumble together,step on each other.Again, like that phase cancellationand phase fighting stuff starts to happenjust like I was talking aboutwith the kick drum and the bass guitar.So to recap, placement is huge.

13:53 And I actually think that it goes beyond human ability,general human ability to perceive.So I think it is a matter of milliseconds,less than 10 milliseconds.It is faster than reaction time,so it has to be predictive and like onset,the moment when a note occurs is more complicated.Like a piano, you hit it, it goes.Piano with one of the dampen keys ongoes a little bit differently.

14:20 A bowed string, they don't like enter in the same way.And that is one of the biggest things I thinkthat contributes to groove is touch, feel.Like if you've seen a guitarist that's very good,play like a very crappy guitarand all of a sudden that crappy guitar sounds good.Part of it is the way that they're able to adjusttheir attack to the given instrumentand the output of the sound.

14:44 So it might not necessarily be like,oh, just the tones in the hand.It might be that they're ableto have a better conversation with that instrumentthan someone else.They can make up for its crappinessbecause they have more just intuitive abilityto adjust the pick strength,whether or not they're using their fingers,how hard they're tightening around the stringsor even the notes placement, you know,

15:07 like some guitars sound really good when you're soloingand you're hitting a lot of stuff on a B string.Some guitars sound better when you're hitting stuffthat's on a G string.It can be the exact same note, exact same frequency,but those different strings resonate differentlyon that guitar or that pickup or whatever it is.So on guitar, you have a lot of options,piano, much less so.

15:28 But on guitar, like you can play that same notein a whole bunch of different placesand some guitars like that note in one placeand other guitars like it in another.It's super bizarre.And these are the weird thingsbecause you don't really think about it.You know, like I say all of thisand it sounds like it's,like you're writing an essay and you're deciding,oh, I'm gonna play this over here.A lot of it is just,

15:47 hey, it feels better over here.A lot of it, it feels like conversation.It feels like deciding what the word,what the word, what word you wanna say next.And you can make a mistake,but as long as you're listening,you can double back and correct itin the ledger in the flow of things.So let's talk some science.So there's a study by Large and Jonescalled Dynamic Attending Theory.And essentially what they're saying

16:14 is that the perceptual system,so the listener or the players,you're learning where events are likely to occurand then you feel good when they do occur there.Or you feel discombobulated.You feel dislodged when they don't occur there.And there's a thing called metric modulation.We're able to move from one meter,one, like one, two, three, four,to say for example, like the Beatles do this

16:38 where then they'll switch all of a suddento um, bop, bop, um, bop, bop.Like a weird waltz, like carnival groove.So that can shuffle and reengage the listenerbecause now they're surprised.But you quickly settle into that new grooveand your expectations for it.And you can actually add like a predictive natureto this within computing.Like there's a really cool, very bizarreimprovisational tool called Voyager

17:08 that is like a player pianothat can listen to you and play stuff back.It's not exactly like AI, I guess it kind of is.It's using machine learning, all these other thingsto try and essentially take what you play,ingest it, and then try and create a reasonable response.So like, yeah, your brain, even as a listener,is trying to predict what's coming nextand part of the groove is living in that prediction

17:35 combined with the way that the playersare choosing their notes,how they play the notes, their attacks,and then how they relate to each other.There's also another concept that researchershave been talking about calledthe Perceptual Center or P Center.It's the point where soundskind of get their temporal location,like the place that it sits.So on a computer, you can zoom in and you see,okay, there's the onset.

18:02 There's the moment that the note is played.But the perception of that can be very, very differentthan the visual representation of it on the computer.And the researcher agrees with what I was sayingintuitively before, which feels good.But essentially there's Danielsen et al.,found that fast short attacks produce relatively narrowonset adjacent timing perception.While slower attacks, like think like a bowed string

18:32 or a synth that kind of comes in,that creates less sharp localized P centers,perceptual centers.So attack speed really matters.And it creates this combination of everythingthat can be layered in.So that's why sometimes it's really coolto have very transient, heavy,like think Vulfpeck or classic funkwhere everything is really sharp.Combined with some strings or some pad elementthat kind of washes over it

19:04 or alternating between the twocan create the effect like the music slows downwithout the music having to slow down.And that's one of my favorite things with metric modulationsand with choices that you're making in terms of transients,in terms of like how many notes you're playing.When you're playing 16th notes,you're subdividing the bar, subdividing the noteinto a way that makes it kind of feel like it's faster.

19:29 In my conversation with Tommaso,I talked about this with him.But you can create through pushing and pulling,through placement, through a number of notesand through attack speed, the impression of energyeven when you don't change the tempo.And I think that's really cool.That's a great tool for us.Even if you're doing electronic music,that's one of the main ways that electronic musicians,which is perfectly to grid.

19:54 It is computerized often.Some of the coolest stuff isn't.But anyway, perfectly to grid, at least nominally.And you can adjust the perception of that gridbased on how many notes, what kind of notes,how fast and how they relate to each other.There's another key learning from this too,where when you drop in samples,so say from a sample library like Splice,into your computer and assume that they all start

20:23 at the right time, you can get this very wrong.So that perceptual center,that's where I think production dovetailsin between art and science, where logically,looking at it, I'm gonna say in logic,the digital audio workstation logic.You can look at it and you can say, okay, that's on beat.But then you listen to it and it doesn't sound on beat.Trust your ears, do not trust your eyes.

20:49 Sometimes a clap wants to be early or late.Sometimes something that looks like it starts on beatdoesn't really.Or worse yet, you don't even look,you don't even listen, you just drag it inand you end up creating some nightmarebecause there's 20 milliseconds of noisebefore every kick drum.So now every kick drum is 20 milliseconds behind.This can be a happy accident.

21:13 Sometimes you can make a really cool weird groove like thatif you don't pay attention to one elementand then adjust everything else around it.That's pretty cool.And I think that that actually kind of goes backto the police thing, like Stewart Copeland,is that you can have something very interestingbut maybe placed wrong.And as long as everybody else is kind of accounting for it,it can work.

21:35 It's just, it's like a basketball team.You can have like one or two bad defendersif everybody else is a really good defender.Same thing with music, like any of the things.Somebody can be out of tune,but if everybody else is so cool and good enoughto make that out of tune person sound hip, doesn't matter.Somebody completely out of rhythm.If everybody else accounts for itand listens to it, doesn't matter.

21:57 One of the hardest things I think isin a very electronic environment,say layering on a tambourine,can be very, very difficultbecause everything is so to gridand then you're physically playing a tambourineand there's almost no room for the humanitybecause nobody's listening to you.But if you layer in the tambourine and say, for example,you move the rest of those electronic instrumentsa little bit around it

22:23 or the vocalist comes in after the tambourineand the vocalist and maybe you have live bassistor something pulls it all together.Now all of a sudden the thing that was a rub,the thing that was friction between the electronicthat was perfectly gridded,perfectly transient hitting attacksand then a very human instrumentwith sloppy transient, sloppy time.Those hate each other,

22:47 but if you can create enough context around it,now all of a sudden it can be really, really cool.But it is a game of milliseconds.So it's not just about playing behind the beatand nudging everything back.It is about creating that P-center,that perceptual version of the musicwhere people are able to predict it,feel good about it, can sit in itand everybody sounds like they're listening to each other.

23:17 It's not just humanization.That's not the whole point.The point is relationships.Relationships make the groove.Just like relationships make my body not hurt.I am feeling better,but it is, it's all about relationshipseven if it's just yourself,even if it's you and a computer,even if it's just a computer to a computer,doesn't matter.Not about the timestamp,not about the visual.It's about something bigger.

23:44 It's about perception.So train your ear.Listen to stuff.Don't trust your eyes.Try and make that groove fat.If you enjoy this podcast,I'd like to invite you to subscribeand rated five stars.Share it with your friends.You can also hear my fat groovesat scoobertdoobert.pizzaand I'll see y'all again next week.Thanks for listening.